| Learn about card sorting with the UserTesting platform. |
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Product: UserTesting Experience: Classic |
On this page:
- About Card sorting
- Types of Card sorting
- When should you do Card sorting?
- Card sorting with UserTesting
About card sorting
Card sorting is a research method that reveals how people naturally group and label information. You can use the insights from a Card sort task to inform decisions related to Information Architecture (e.g. your website's navigation, an app's settings menu, or a store's product categories). The result is an information architecture grounded in how your audience actually thinks, not how your team assumes they think.
Types of card sorting
In Card Sort tasks, participants are given “cards” containing one items each and are asked to place these cards into groups. There are three types of card sort tasks: open, closed, and hybrid:
| Open card sort | Closed card sort | Hybrid card sort |
| Participants group the cards and then name the resulting categories. | Participants place items into predefined categories. | Participants place items in predefined categories and also have the option to create and name additional categories if the existing categories do not match their expectations. |
When should you do card sorting?
It’s best to do a card sort when you want to understand how participants group a specific set of items or tasks. For example, maybe you’re looking for the most logical place to insert a “Fitness Trackers” category on your online electronics store; thus you may consider a card sorting activity to see if it fits in a predetermined category, or when your customers have a better idea of where it should be placed
Card sorts are typically executed in the early stages of the design process. One common use case is when you’re launching a new website or app or redesigning an existing website/app, and you need to group information in the most logical way possible. In these cases, card sorting can tell you where people would expect to find a category on your site.
Card sorting with UserTesting
Classic experience
There are two ways to build a card sort:
- Using the classic card sort option which uses our external IA tool. This option is best for more complex card sorts and provides more detailed analysis.
- Using the card sort option lets you build the card sort right in the UserTesting platform.
New experience
Card sort tasks (only closed for now) can be added to a new Think-out-loud test or an Interaction test.
Card Sort type availability
| Test creation experience in UserTesting | Open card sort | Closed card sort | Hybrid card sort |
| Classic experience | Available |
Available |
Available |
| New experience | Closed Beta |
Coming soon |
Coming soon |
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